was no fool!" and lament the hardship of the
times?--SCHILLER: _The Robbers_.

Turpin's quick eye ranged over the spreading sward in front of the
ancient priory, and his brow became contracted. The feeling, however,
was transient. The next instant saw him the same easy, reckless being he
had been before. There was a little more paleness in his cheek than
usual; but his look was keener, and his knees involuntarily clasped the
saddle more firmly. No other symptom of anxiety was perceptible. It
would be no impeachment to Dick's valor were it necessary to admit that
a slight tremor crossed him as he scanned the formidable array of his
opponents. The admission is needless. Dick himself would have been the
last man to own it; nor shall we do the memory of our undaunted
highwayman any such injustice. Turpin was intrepid to a fault. He was
rash; apt to run into risks for the mere pleasure of getting out of
them: danger was his delight, and the degree of excitement was always in
proportion to the peril incurred. After the first glance, he became, to
use his own expressive phrase, "as cool as a cucumber;" and continued,
as long as they permitted him, like a skilful commander, calmly to
calculate the numerical strength of his adversaries, and to arrange his
own plan of resistance.

This troop of horsemen, for such it was, might probably amount in the
aggregate to twenty men, and presented an appearance like that of a
strong muster at a rustic fox-chase, due allowance being made for the
various weapons of offence; to-wit: naked sabers, firelocks, and a world
of huge horse-pistols, which the present _field_ carried along with
them. This resemblance was heightened by the presence of an old huntsman
and a gamekeeper or two, in scarlet and green jackets, and a few yelping
hounds that had followed after them. The majority of the crew consisted
of sturdy yeomen; some of whom, mounted upon wild, unbroken colts, had
pretty lives of it to maintain their seats, and curvetted about in "most
admired disorder;" others were seated upon more docile, but quite as
provoking specimens of the cart-horse breed, whose sluggish sides,
reckless alike of hobnailed heel or ash sapling, refused to obey their
riders' intimations to move; while others again, brought stiff,
wrong-headed ponies to the charge--obstinate, impracticable little
brutes, who seemed to prefer revolving on their own axis, and describing
absurd rotatory motions, to proceeding in